Monthly Archives: December 2019

The holidays are over, and in many cases, our stomachs show the evidence of their feasts and bountiful sweets.

But buffets with mounds of food always have squelched my appetite. It might be the huge selection, the mixture of food aromas or that I was taught to eat all the food on my plate at a meal.

I also know many people go without even a portion of that bounty.

Although the United States is considered a land of plenty, many live with food insecurity. We all should ponder how we manage the food we buy.

As my husband, Bob, and I gradually moved from a household of five down to two, we continued to cook for five. Our freezer often was full of leftovers. But I confess to throwing food away in the past.

Over the past 25 years, we learned to cook for two. We subscribed to Cooking for Two magazine from Taste of Home. I found allrecipes.com, where you can choose the number of people you want the recipe to serve, and it adjusts the measurements.

Ty Marsh, executive director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, said in Franklin County alone, nearly a million pounds of food waste enters the landfill every day.

Dr. Allan Lines, Ohio State University professor emeritus and a Worthington resident, taught courses in farm management, farm finance and agribusiness finance. He remains active as an agricultural consultant in Ohio, the U.S. and in international agriculture.

“There is a lot of food wasted here and in the rest of the developed world,” Lines said.

He said he was shocked in 2018 when he took a group of visiting professors from Ukraine to a food-distribution company in central Ohio.

“The managers of the warehouse told us that of every 100 semitruck trailers coming into the distribution center with fresh food, four truckloads were separated as ‘unusable’ and sent on to the landfill,” he said.

“This was largely because of spoilage or conditions, such as blemishes, poor coloring, unripe, overripe and misshapen or other attributes the consumer is unwilling to purchase,” Lines said. “So it is not just the waste at home. We have a long way to go to train families, young and old, that fresh foods don’t need to be perfect to be edible and nutritious.”

We each can take measures to become better at managing our resources.

Bob and I have a small compost bin in our yard that we fill with food scraps. This becomes soil rich with nutrients for our garden. SWACO recommends shopping with a list — I have heard never to shop hungry — as well as freezing leftovers or feeding them to your dog (if they’re safe for animals).

Our dog has refused only a few foods, but check with your veterinarian for recommendations. Like people, all dogs are different.

I was encouraged to learn that a year ago, SWACO launched the Central Ohio Food Waste Initiative, a group of more than 60 organizations working together to reduce food waste. The initiative is concentrating on three areas: food-waste prevention, food rescue (getting extra food to those in need) and food recycling.

This group will release the results of a feasibility study and kick off a consumer-education campaign this year, including a food-waste-reduction program in schools.

SWACO grants support residential compost options across the region. The cities of Bexley, Worthington and Upper Arlington have instituted the pilot program.

In November, SWACO released new numbers that show central Ohio has surpassed a 50% diversion rate. This means residents and businesses are keeping more than half of the waste they create out of the landfill by recycling, composting and reusing materials.

When you see that not-so-perfect piece of fruit dangling from a tree or in the produce department, give it a try. Think of ways to be wise with the food available to us.

Make our only footprint in that compost-rich soil of our garden, with a lifestyle of guarding our land’s resources.

Check out swaco.org and look for places to dispose of products. To learn about the initiative, go to cofwi.com.

Leaves were falling like rain as I waited for the actual rain to begin.

Early last month, autumn in its glory of color and cool temperatures were blowing out of Ohio. Winter was close behind.

My friend, Sonja, called me while the winds blew.

“Liz, have you listened to the leaves? They sound like the ocean.”

“The leaves on the ground?” There were plenty of those.

“No, in the trees. Go listen.”

So I did. It took me a moment to match the sound with the idea of the ocean.

Then I got it. The wind blowing the drying leaves in the trees sounded like the ocean surf as it rolled onto the beach. I could almost smell the saltwater and feel the cold waves splashing over my bare feet.

Never once had I thought about how one distinct sound could remind me of another – especially two so different. Dry leaves and ocean surf? Yet there it was flowing into my brain. I could close my eyes and remember being at the ocean and figuratively lapping up the sound.

In 1976, I was in the ocean at Martha’s Vineyard. My 2-year-old daughter played in the sand. The surf drowned out all other sounds, except for the squawking seagulls as they swooped through the sky.

By 1992, sounds were elusive, and by 2000, they had gone silent.

In 2002, though, I received my first cochlear implant. When I visited my daughter and her family in California, of course, I went to the ocean.

That’s when I stood in the surf once again and heard the waves rolling onto the beach. The water washed over my bare feet, and I sunk partly into the sand as I stood there soaking in the beautiful sound. The rhythm hummed in the air and vibrated in the sand.

During December, I’m especially aware that another year is ending and a new one is peeking around the corner. With the joy of Christmas closing out the month, I often find myself counting my blessings.

I review the year and see what I, and others in my life, have come through.

Irving Berlin might have thought of this when he wrote “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep),” sung in the movie “White Christmas”: